Category Archives: Health

Working Out While Sore (or Still Recovering From My Weekend)

Posted on April 18, 2016 | Comments Off

Between my 5K from Saturday, dancing my butt off at the wedding on Sunday, and doing a lot of walking with the dog all weekend; my legs were feeling a bit tired this week for my workouts. I was feeling it every morning when I woke up (and I was basically limping in for the first hour or so each day) so I was grateful that all my workouts this past week were in the afternoon so I wasn’t feeling too horrible. But even though I was not as sore during my workouts, I still was trying to be careful because I knew if I worked too hard that I would be sore from longer than I wanted to be.

My first workout of the week was on Tuesday afternoon (I wasn’t sure what time I’d be getting home on Monday so I didn’t want to have to stress about getting back in time for a workout). I was still hurting quite a bit on Tuesday so I was so happy to see that it was going to be a run/row day. Not only was it a run/row day, it was called the easiest run/row day ever! My sore legs were so grateful to hear that!

The run/row format was pretty easy. The first round was a 30 second push pace, 30 second all out pace, and then over to the rower for a 100 meter row. The next round was a 1 minute push pace, 30 second all out pace, and then over to the rower for a 100 meter row. Each round just increased the push pace by 30 seconds and the rest stayed the same. The longest one was a 3 minute push pace and if we got past that we were supposed to work our way back up. I did the first few rounds at 3.7 miles an hour because they were short and I was still feeling a bit slow from my race so I wanted to prove to myself that I can be faster. The next few rounds were at 3.6 miles an hour and the 2 1/2 and 3 minute rounds were at 3.5 miles an hour. I made it through all the rounds, but I didn’t make it back up. But I’m ok with that. I was going really fast for me and even though I was progressively getting slower I was still staying on the faster side for me. And since the treadmill time was so limited, my legs didn’t hurt too much by the time we switched to the floor.

We had a lot of squats on the floor which were fine for me. But then when we did lunges I struggled a lot because my calves were feeling so tight. I knew they were tight a bit because that was the soreness I felt, but I guess I didn’t realize how much the treadmill would affect me. So the lunges were done with less movement than I would normally do, but I felt pretty great about everything that I did.

Wednesday was a day that had all 3 types of workouts (endurance, strength, and power). It was a 30 minutes on the treadmill straight type of day and my legs weren’t having it. I tried really hard to not have to take breaks in the middle of the blocks, but I was really hurting. I realized after class that maybe I should have taken one of my stronger painkillers instead of the ones that I normally take, but since it’s been a while since I’ve needed one of the strong ones I didn’t even think about taking one. During the strength block, I was supposed to go really high on the inclines on the treadmill, but I just kept it at 8% for the entire time even though the runners had to do an incline higher than that. I just focused on finishing the cardio and not working out super hard.

For the floor time, I tried to do all my lower body work with 20 pound weights and all of my arm work with 15 pound weights. We also had a lot of ab work on the floor with medicine balls. Typically I use 8 pounds for a medicine ball, but there were none of those left so I used 10 pounds. I felt the difference (and I felt it in my abs when I woke up the next morning) and while it wasn’t easy I was able to do it.

Friday was another run/row day! Someone commented about how there have been so many run/row days lately and I don’t think they were happy about it. But those really are my favorite days (or a second favorite to partner day workouts). This time the run/row was a bit tougher than the one on Tuesday. For power walkers, the longest walk was .13 miles and the shortest was .05 miles. And for all of us the rows were between 250 and 100 meters. The plan was designed to do at least one entire round of all the segments, and I was able to get through the entire plan and was starting on the first one again when time was called. By Friday, my legs were feeling a bit more normal (having Thursday off helped a lot) so all my treadmill segments regardless of length were 3.5 miles an hour. It helped that all treadmill segments were less than 2 1/2 minutes, but all these little sprints are helping me get ready to bringing my base pace up from 3.4 to 3.5 miles an hour again (where I was before my torn calf).

On the floor, there were a lot of squats and lunges again. For both things, I was using 20 pound weights (one weight in each hand). With my squats those aren’t too bad, but it’s always tough for me to do lunges with weights in my hands because I don’t balance that well with lunges. But I took my time, put the weights down if I needed to steady myself, and was able to make it through. We finished up the floor block with 4 minutes of abs using a BOSU ball and when we were done I was so glad I made it through.

I debated about doing a 4th workout, but I didn’t want to push it too much. Friday was the first day my legs were feeling almost normal again and I didn’t want to overdo it and prevent myself from feeling normal again this week. I’m not exactly sure when my next 4 workout week will be, but it will need to be soon. I’m signed up for the Triple Buddy Challenge at Orangetheory. From April 18th until May 18th I’m partnered up with 2 friends to try to get in 45 workouts between us. So each of us will need to do 15 workouts. I’ve done this before (and we were successful) so I’m not too worried about it. I just need to plan out the next month of workouts to make sure that I do my part or more to make sure my team wins!

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Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged fitness, Orangetheory, pain, tired, workout

Just A Bad Day (or Focusing On Good)

Posted on April 8, 2016 | Comments Off

Yesterday was a pretty bad day for me. I really have no clue what started it. I was feeling fine when I went to bed the night before. I got a decent night sleep and didn’t have any issues waking up with my alarm. I didn’t even hit the snooze button a million times so I wasn’t groggy when I got out of bed. It really should have been a great day, but it wasn’t in the cards for me.

I usually don’t do errands outside the house before work, but I had to go to the grocery store to get a couple of things for meals the next couple of days. I think the first mistake was not eating anything before going to the store (it was 8am and I wasn’t hungry get). I bought a couple of things that I probably shouldn’t have gotten. And then I ate some of those things as my breakfast.

When I’ve eaten “bad” foods before, I sometimes feel off and a little sick. I have felt pretty sick on occasion, but that’s pretty rare and it usually doesn’t happen until that night or the next day. But this time, I was feeling sick about 10 minutes after I ate. I won’t get too graphic, but my body was basically rejecting what I had eaten.

This took me by surprise. Obviously, I don’t want to like the “bad” foods so feeling awful afterward was not the worst thing ever. But I don’t know why this time my body reacting so badly and so quickly. While I have been doing better with my food, it’s not a huge difference like it has been in the past. So I would expect that my body would have had worse reactions when I had been “good” for a week or more and then had a binge. But that wasn’t the case this time and I think this was the worst I ever felt.

I felt pretty bad all day long, but the worst was over before my work shift started. I was feeling pretty low and depressed all morning. There was no reason why I had a binge and it made it mad that I had done it. I wish that I had more control, and I’m getting there. But yesterday was just out of my control in the morning and my body (and mind) was paying for it.

Instead of focusing on how badly I felt, I tried to find some positive motivation online to get me into a better mindset. I found a bunch of sayings that I liked and since I couldn’t pick just one I made a collage of them.

Motivation

The most difficult part of recovery for me really isn’t the recovery part of it. It’s getting over setbacks and relapses quickly. It’s so easy to think that you just ruined everything and you might as well wait until Monday/next month/next year to start over. I’m happy to say that after my bad morning I was back on track for lunch and dinner. I wasn’t feeling hungry for either meal, but I made myself eat because I knew if I didn’t that I would get very hungry either late at night or by breakfast today and that’s when I make some of my worst choices. So I ate small healthy meals for both lunch and dinner. I know I’m still over my calories for the day because my morning was so bad, but at least I’m a bit more on track now.

Even though I got back on track by my next meal, my morning did affect how I was feeling the entire day. Part of it was the physical sickness which was a reminder of what I did. But despite my best efforts I was still thinking about what I had done and was mad at myself.

I’m hoping that today will be a better day and maybe I learned something from this (and will handle it better if/when it happens again). All these little lessons will one day build up to help me be in recovery and I just need to keep reminding myself that baby steps are better than no steps at all.

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Posted in Food, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, recovery, tough

Finding New Limitations (or Trying My Best)

Posted on April 4, 2016 | Comments Off

This past week my workouts seemed to focus on things that were issues for me. This was not the fault of any of my coaches, it’s just what it was and for some reason it got to me (and inspired my post on limitations last week). I tried to do my best each day, but there always seemed to be a reason why my body wasn’t going to be able to do that.

Monday started off pretty great. We had a workout that was endurance, strength, and power so it was a nice combination of things. It was a switch day so I was able to push myself a bit more on both the treadmill and the floor. I loved being able to push myself because we had a long push pace on the treadmill (3 minutes) and a longer than a sprint row (600 meters) that I really wanted to work on. I’m better with sprints than anything else, so when things aren’t exactly a sprint it’s a great time to push myself without doing too much. Besides the rowing, we had some lunges with the TRX straps which is also great because I can do better lunges on the straps than I can without support.

But then we reached the end of the workout where everyone went to the floor. I thought it would be a core blast like we do sometimes where we do a bunch of crunches and planks. Those are tough, but doable. But instead of a core blast, we had a glute blast. At first I thought I should be able to do it, but then I realized that every single move in the plan were things that my body can’t do. Either my body doesn’t move that way right now because of how my hip sits or I know it would cause me some serious pain because that’s how I feel the most pain right now. My coach was able to give me my own plan (I ended up doing all ab work then instead), so I wasn’t just sitting and waiting on everyone. But it just made me so mad that I wasn’t able to do something. Even with all my limitations there is something I can do to modify it to make it ok for me. This was the first time where there was no way I could try or modify it to work for me to be the same thing as everyone else. It just hit me that I really hate my restrictions and that I want to figure out what steps to do next to get myself fixed.

That frustration actually worked to my benefit on Wednesday. I was chatting with my Wednesday coach (who has a similar hip issue but hers is super minor so it was able to be treated with stem cells) and she realized that the Kaiser orthopedic surgeon she wanted to introduce me to was actually in class that day! So she introduced me to the doctor and he and I got chatting. He actually doesn’t take patients on like me, but he said that if I got him my Kaiser information he would refer me to one of the other doctors at his hospital that could help me. This isn’t really a workout situation, but I have to say that the doctor was awesome because the next morning I got a call from Kaiser Panorama City (which is about an hour away from me) and I have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in 2 weeks! Hopefully I can get another opinion on my situation and get a treatment plan in place!

Ok, back to my workout.

Wednesday was a strength day, which means hills on the treadmill. But it was also a run/row day! I think most people think I’m crazy for loving run/row days as much as I do, but they make me so happy! The run part was all at 7 or 9% inclines and each segment was pretty short. I think the longest I was on the treadmill was about 3 minutes. And the rows were all sprints that day. They were either 300, 200, or 100 meter rows. 300 still is a long sprint, but it’s so much easier for me to push myself for 300 meters than it is on the longer rows. So I was able to get my wattage up even though my hips were struggling on the rower. When we got to the floor, I had realized I overdid it a bit on the run/row so I had to take things a little bit easier than usually. All my arm work was with 15 pound weights (I knew I could probably do 20 pounds but I was tired) and I took moments to breathe when I was down on the floor doing crunches. By the end of the class, I was pretty glad I got through it but I was so exhausted!

Friday was another endurance, strength, and power day. Unfortunately, the treadmill blocks were all back to back so I spend 30 minutes on the treadmill. And for some reason on Friday, my body was just giving up on the treadmill. I was doing ok at first, but then I just needed to keep taking breaks. By the end of the treadmill time, I was almost needing to do a quick break every minute to stretch out my hips. I know that part of the pain was weather related, but this was more than I am used to. It makes me nervous that I had that much pain because I’m doing my 5K this week, but hopefully by the time it’s race day I’ll be doing better (and all this training I know is helping).

After I was finally done with the treadmill, I was pretty happy to get over to the floor. It wasn’t easy on the floor, but all of our rows were timed sprints so I was only on there for 1 minute or 30 seconds each time. I definitely pushed myself on the rower and got some of the highest wattages I’ve ever gotten on the rower before. We also had something new on the floor with our burpees. Usually we do burpees either just with body weight or holding a Bosu. But this time we did our burpees with a medicine ball. While the weight wasn’t as great as when we use a Bosu, the increased instability with the planks made it new and more difficult than usual. It took me a moment to get steady before I could move my legs back and forth, but it wasn’t that tough and I felt pretty happy that I could do it without any extra modifications.

This week at Orangetheory is Peak Performance Week. I’m going to be there for 3 days and I don’t know yet what challenges will be on the 3 days that I’m there. So I guess I’ll have to be surprised on what I’ll be doing and hopefully whatever I do gets me in the best place I can be for my race on Saturday morning!

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Posted in Fitness, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged challenge, hip issues, Orangetheory, pain, struggle, workout

A Year On Vyvanse (or Help Is Expensive)

Posted on March 22, 2016 | 2 comments

I’ve been taking Vyvanse for just about a year now. It’s crazy to think that a year ago I started my journey with this medication and my therapist. And while I’m still struggling, I’ve made some significant progress over the past year.

When I started Vyvanse, I had so many hopes that this would make all my binge feelings go away and I would be “normal”. And for the first few days that was exactly what it felt like. But then my body adjusted to the medication and while it does help quite a bit, it’s not the miracle drug that I secretly hoped it would be. Over the past year, we’ve adjusted my medication a few times. I started at 20mg a day and right now I’m at 50mg a day (30mg in the morning and 20mg at lunchtime). There is a chance that things will be adjusted again when I see my doctor in a couple of months, but for now I’m happy where I am.

While I’m so grateful that I was approved to be on this medication, I know how lucky I am. Not everyone does get approved even if they have a history of binge eating disorder. I think you need to prove to the doctor that you are working on things yourself and not expecting the medicine to do all the work for you (similar to getting approved for weight loss surgery). I think the fact that I was doing a regular workout routine helped show my doctor that I am working toward a healthy lifestyle and one of the things holding me back from achieving what I want is my eating disorder.

I’m also grateful that my parents have been willing to help me with the expenses related to the medication. I do have health insurance (which got so much cheaper after the Affordable Care Act since I have so many pre-existing conditions), but I still have to pay for prescriptions. My medication co-pay is $50 a month. And I have to pay that for 2 different strengths of Vyvanse, so each month costs $100. And on top of that, I have a deductible for my prescriptions. Thankfully, I maxed when I refilled 1 strength of Vyvanse the other day. But it still made it extremely expensive ($250 for the deductible and another $150 for the prescription). It will be just the co-pay for the rest of the year, but $100 a month for a medication that isn’t required for my health is something to really think about.

I’m thinking about talking to my doctor when I see him in a few months about either going back down to 2 20mg pills a day or up to 2 30mg pills a day. That way, I only have 1 prescription per day and it will be half the price I have now. Money isn’t the best reason to ask for a prescription to be changed, but I at least want to bring up the concern to my doctor.

Outside of the help that I’ve gotten from the medication, there have been so many positive steps I’ve made in the past year toward my recovery. Before, my recovery was a passive effort. I tried, but I wasn’t trying that hard. Now, I have changed how I track my food. Not having to see the calories has allowed me to have 100% accurate food tracking with no stress. I’ve been listening to podcasts about recovery and reading books to help me. These are things that I should have done years ago but haven’t. While the books I’ve got aren’t free, I wait until they are on sale to buy them. And of course, the podcasts are free to that saves some money.

It’s sad that for me to get help it costs as much as it does. But I’m spending a lot less than many people do. For people who don’t have prescription coverage (or as good of coverage as I do), Vyvanse can cost significantly more than what I’m spending. I’m lucky that my appointments with my doctor only require my co-pay and nothing extra. And I’m not in an in-patient facility (which can be thousands of dollars a day). It’s not making my money issues worse because my parents are helping, but that’s also a lucky break I have. I wish that more things were available and free (or cheap) to help with recovery from a binge eating disorder. I feel in the next few years that maybe there will be more offerings as more people are diagnosed or aware of this eating disorder.

For now, I’m happy where I am a year into this new plan and hopefully the next year will bring even more progress toward recovery and hopefully an idea of how to maintain the progress I have made so far.

2 Comments

Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge eating, doctor, eating disorder, medication, recovery

Cooking Routine (or Adding Flavor)

Posted on March 11, 2016 | Comments Off

I’m working really hard at cooking more at home. With my challenge for this month being no delivery food, I must have better options in my house to eat so I don’t fail at the challenge.

I think what I really struggled with in the past was the sheer number of options for foods to make. I have dozens of cookbooks (I recently gave some away so I think it might just be under 2 dozen cookbooks now) and all of them have lots of recipes that seem super delicious and I know I could probably make them. I’m a good cook and I can follow a recipe, so I don’t worry too much about not being able to make something (although I do worry about something not tasting good if I make it).

I think the other problem with a majority of the recipes in the cookbooks are the number of ingredients that a recipe requires. Maybe if I had a huge kitchen I’d keep a ton of ingredients on hand to be able to make anything with very little grocery shopping required, but that’s not my situation. My kitchen is a small but functional and I don’t have much storage or counter space. So I have to keep things limited that I store. So many of the recipes seem like I would have to fill an entire grocery cart with the ingredients just for that meal. That’s expensive, that’s a lot of stuff to store, and chances are most of it would spoil before I used it up.

So a lot of the things I’ve been making in the past have been pretty plain. I do a lot of the same veggie bowls that I made a year ago on the cleanse I did. Even though the meatloaf I make is a bit fancier, it’s still not a ton of ingredients and it’s really easy to put together. I keep lots of things that are easy to make (like turkey burgers and veggies) in my freezer so it’s not too difficult to put together a basic dinner. And I’m glad that this is a habit that I’m still sticking with.

But I’m still looking to bring more variety into my cooking because even though basic foods can be healthy, they can be boring. And I know that if I get bored with something I won’t keep eating it (that’s why I stopped making veggie bowls for so long). So I’m working on easy ways to add variety to the flavor of my foods but don’t require too much effort or shopping.

This past week I had a couple of different meals that worked out really well. Toward the beginning of the week, I made a turkey burger for dinner (which to me is perfect just plain on its own). But I knew I’d want a good side dish to go with it. I had picked up some broccoli because I figured I’d make broccoli at some point, so I figured this was as good of a time as any. I steamed the florets in the microwave and then put those into a bowl to cool a bit. Then I browned some butter in the microwave (it’s a bit messy, but the flavor is totally worth it) and after that was done added some fresh lemon juice to it. My mom does this to broccoli all the time and it’s one of my favorites. And it made a delicious and nice looking dinner that night.

Turkey Burger

Next time I’ll make more of it because I ate so much of it and I need to do some adjustments to the flavor of the sauce (I needed more lemon), but it was really good and reminded me how good healthy food is.

Then on Wednesday night after my workout I knew I needed to cook dinner. I used to hate cooking dinner on workout nights, but I’m starting to be ok with it. In the past, I might microwave a dinner or get delivery after a workout because I was tired. But honestly it’s not that much harder for me to cook (I know, everyone has been telling me this for years but I didn’t believe it) and as long as I have things in my kitchen that are easy enough to put together I can get it done really quickly.

One thing that I’m a bit obsessed with right now are smashed potatoes. I use baby potatoes and cook them for a few minutes in the microwave. Then I smash them down with a paper towel and bake them until they are super crispy. I usually use my oven to bake them in, but on Wednesday I wasn’t using my oven for anything else. So I tried making them in my toaster oven. And to add some flavoring to them, I tried this new seasoning grinder I got at Trader Joes.

Garlic Salt

While the potatoes were baking, I cooked up some chicken sausages and thankfully I timed things out pretty well because the potatoes were done pretty soon after the chicken was. While I’ve made these potatoes a lot lately, adding this new garlic salt seasoning really made a huge difference and made them so good! I’m thinking maybe I’ll try this seasoning on some chicken next week.

While I’m super happy that I’m still keeping up with cooking at home and that I’m taking more chances and finding more things I enjoy making, I’m still worried that this is a phase and I will go back to my old ways. Maybe being cautiously optimistic is better than feeling overly confident that I’ve changed and will never go back to how I was before. I really want to keep making steps toward a healthier (and cheaper) life and I know that cooking is a huge part of that. Hopefully I’m able to keep this up.

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Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged cooking, dinner, food, health issues, meal planning, meals

Pushing A Bit Too Much (or Glad I Took The Weekend Off)

Posted on March 7, 2016 | Comments Off

This week I had 3 workouts. I had originally planned for 4, but I was so exhausted after Friday that I knew that a Saturday workout wasn’t in the cards for me. I really did push myself hard this week and I think that my body was done after those 3 workouts.

Monday was an afternoon workout for me (instead of a morning one) because of an appointment I had that morning. I’m pretty used to my Monday morning workouts, but I still prefer afternoon ones so I was fine moving my workout. It was a run/row day, so that made me pretty happy too. Any time I don’t have to spend a full 30 minutes on the treadmill is a good day for me. All the segments in the run/row were pretty doable for me so I used the time to try to push myself in my speeds. I was actually able to do 1/4 mile (a little more than 4 minutes) at 6% incline and 3.5 miles an hour. That’s the longest I’ve done 3.5 miles an hour since my calf injury and it’s another sign that I’m almost back to where I was before my injury. It wasn’t easy to do that fast for that long, but it was a big step for me and I’m glad that I pushed myself to do it.

The floor work on Monday was an interested adventure. It was a single block (about 23 minutes) that had 6 exercises in it. We had to go through the 6 exercises continuously (each round had a different number of reps), but every 3 minutes we had to pause. Every 3 minutes we would get a 1 minute exercise to do (like burpees). After that minute we went back to the regular 6 exercise plan and pick up where we stopped. It was very different from what I’m used to, but I actually really liked the plan. It helped to break up a long block of floor work and since the 1 minute exercises were different and didn’t repeat, it almost felt like a break when we had them.

Wednesday was a switch day, so it was another day that I didn’t have to do the full 30 minutes on the treadmill straight. It was a strength day, which means lots of inclines on the treadmill. I always do inclines since I’m a power walker, but I tried to push my inclines a bit more that day since that was the goal of the day. I’m still struggling with going higher than 8% incline for a long time, but we had an interesting walking break in the workout that allowed me to work on that. Everyone had to do a power walk at 10% incline for 3.5 minutes. Since everyone was instructed to walk, we could slow down our speeds (even the power walkers). I did my 3.5 minutes at 3.1 miles an hour and was able to stay at the 10% incline for the entire thing. It wasn’t easy and my hips were feeling pretty sore after we were done, but it wasn’t as bad as the pain I’ve had in the past so I’m trying to think of it as improvement.

With strength days, we are also supposed to use heavier weights when we are on the floor. So I decided to go for it and did all of my bicep work with 20 pound weights. When the reps are lower that’s not that difficult for me, but the higher reps rounds were really tough and I could feel my arms getting so tired by the last few reps. But that’s exactly what we are supposed to feel. I know I was doing great with the weights I had chosen for my floor work because my Wednesday coach, JZ, came over and was very impressed that I wasn’t using 12 or 15 pound weights.

Friday was the day that kind of broke me. I have no clue why I was so tired (I didn’t get as much sleep as usual, but that wasn’t enough to make me as tired as I felt), but the entire workout felt like it was a struggle for me. For a lot of it, I felt like I was underwater and couldn’t move fast enough. It wasn’t supposed to be a switch day, but I’m so thankful that it ended up being one. I have no idea if I would have been able to do the treadmill blocks back to back.

On the treadmill, we had a couple of long push paces. I was doing them at my usual speed and incline, but I was barely able to make it a minute before I needed to step onto the rails and catch my breath. My heart rate was really high and I was sweating like crazy too and I don’t think I was pushing myself that much harder than I normally do. I just wasn’t able to keep up with what I do most days. On the floor, I worked on pushing myself (I was able to do squats with a 20 pound weight in each hand), but again I was exhausted and had to take several breaks during each block. It was really frustrating to feel so weak while working out, but I’m hoping it was a weird issue (maybe I was getting sick?) and it won’t return again.

With my days off over the weekend, I was dealing with a bit of soreness and feeling a bit off. But I’m hoping that after 2 rest days I’ll be back to normal this week and ready to get back to what I’m used to doing. I’m not used to having such an extreme off day, but maybe I needed it as a reminder of how far I’ve come lately.

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Posted in Fitness, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged fitness, Orangetheory, pain, struggle, tired, workout

Replacing My Scale (or Somehow It Wasn’t A Big Deal To Me This Time)

Posted on February 18, 2016 | Comments Off

I’ve seriously had a love/hate relationship with the scale. I refuse to look at any scale other than my own because I know that the scale might not be calibrated correctly and I’m not being weighed in the condition that I always weigh myself in (which is first thing in the morning after going to the bathroom and before I eat or drink anything). If I have to get weighed in somewhere (like at the doctor or for an Orangetheory challenge), I do blind weight where I step on the scale backwards and don’t find out what it says.

I’ve had panic attacks related to my scale. If I have to replace it, I feel like all the effort I had previously put into my weight loss is worthless because the new scale might weigh me differently than the old one. I’m aware how crazy that sounds, but panic attacks aren’t rational and that’s really what my crazy brain thinks. So I’ve gone months in the past without a working scale (which doesn’t help my panic attacks either because I’m terrified I’ve gained a ton of weight and don’t know it), or I search high and low for the exact same scale I previously owned thinking that somehow that would make a difference.

I don’t know when this issue with the scale started, but it’s been like this for a very long time. So when my scale was acting weird I got really nervous. I would step on the scale and a variety of error messages came up. But since it would eventually zero out I thought I could weigh myself. But I would get such an extreme range of weights from the scale. It could start at 375 pounds and then go down to 17 pounds and everything in between. So I knew that something wasn’t right and it needed to be fixed.

First, I changed out the batteries thinking that it would fix the issue. But even with the new batteries I had the exact same error messages (mainly it was an overload message which shouldn’t have happened because the scale is good up to 400 pounds and I’m not near that weight at all). So since the new batteries didn’t work, I immediately went on the search for a new scale and was scared that it would take a long time to be ok with a new one.

I’m shocked that I went onto Amazon, found a scale with decent ratings, and felt totally ok ordering it right then and there. Because of Amazon Prime the new scale was at my doorstep early the next morning and the old scale went immediately into the trash.

New Scale

As soon as the new scale was set up (I’m happy that it came with batteries so I didn’t have to buy them), I stepped on it. I weighed 4 pounds more than I did on my old scale, but that’s ok. That is my new current weight and as long as this scale keeps working that will be the weight that I will be working with.

It was as simple as that. No panic attacks (although I was mad that my scale broke and the company had gone out of business so I couldn’t get a replacement or any help) and I’m fine with the new scale. I don’t know what changed in my life to make this so much easier than all the other times I’ve had to do it in the past. I still plan on doing blind weights when I’m not at home, but I know that doing that will keep me from worrying what the scale says at other places or under other conditions. I wish that so many other things that cause me panic attacks or anxiety could go away for no reason like this did. So many things would be so much easier if that happened, but I know that it’s a bit of an unrealistic dream.

I’ve got a few other things coming up that have always caused me panic that I haven’t had to deal with recently (more on that in another post) and I’m cautiously optimistic that somehow they will be easier for me now. I had that experience at the dentist recently and there really is no reason for it. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the Vyvanse dose I’m taking. It’s supposed to make my panic/anxiety disorder worse, but maybe it’s making it better?

I can only hope that that’s true.

Comments Off on Replacing My Scale (or Somehow It Wasn’t A Big Deal To Me This Time)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Shopping, Tough Stuff, Weight Loss

Tagged medication, online shopping, panic, panic attack, scale, shopping

An Easier Workout Week (or Ignoring My Head And Listening To My Body)

Posted on February 15, 2016 | Comments Off

After doing a couple of 4 workout weeks, it was really nice to have a 3 workout week this past week. I had actually originally planned this past week to be a 4 workout week, but due to scheduling issues and street closures from the LA marathon it wasn’t possible. But I know my body needed a bit of an easier week, so I enjoyed my 3 workouts and taking things a bit easy.

I was so happy on Monday that we got to switch between blocks. I’ve been saying that I feel like we are switching between blocks less often than we had in the past, and I have been missing those. It seems to help me do better on the treadmill because it breaks up the treadmill block and I don’t get as tired as easily (but I think getting over being tired is the reason I probably need the solid 30 minute treadmill blocks).

During the treadmill blocks, we had some 3 minute push paces to do. I think 3 minutes is the longest push pace we ever have (except when we are doing timed or distance challenges where you set your own pace the entire time), and 3 minutes is a long time! I’m pretty ok doing my 3.5 miles an hour push during 2 minutes or less, but that 3rd minute seems so difficult and I really want to break through that time barrier. I think I did pretty ok with my pushes, but I’m pretty hard on myself and I wish that I was doing my pushes (and base pace) faster by now). Besides those long treadmill blocks, I was using 20 pound weights for all of my arm work today. And I’ll admit that I feel like a bit of a badass using 20 pound weights for my bicep work (I started at 10 pounds).

The end of the workout on Monday was pretty fun with a partner challenge. The partner work was a combination of treadmill, rowing, and lunges on the floor. One partner was on the treadmill while the other person did 200 meters on the row and then did a lap of walking lunges around the floor space. Many people used weights during the lunges, but since walking lunges are very tough on my balance I kept my hands free. I worked really hard to make sure my partner wasn’t stuck on the treadmill any longer than I was, and that was a great motivator!

Wednesday was back to a 30 minute treadmill block. There was nothing spectacular for me about that treadmill block. I know I can do better in my mind, but my body isn’t ready for it and that’s such a tough thing to battle through. I was pushing things a bit more with my all outs and picking up the speed, but that was always a short sprint and not something that I feel like I can maintain for a decent amount of the treadmill time.

I was pretty happy with my floor work that day though. We did a lot on the Bosu and that’s one of pieces of workout equipment I have a love/hate relationship with. I know I can do Bosu work because I have done it before, but the condition of my hips have gotten worse since then so I’m struggling a lot. I want to improve my balance because I think that will help so much more, but it’s baby steps. We had to do sit-ups to standing on the Bosu, but my body can’t do that combination yet. So I do a round of sit-ups and then a round of squats. Still the same motions, just broken down a bit. But when we used the Bosu for the arm work, I felt amazing! I was having a bit of balance issues, but I was able to correct myself much quicker than I have in the past and I felt like it was less of a balance change and more of an arm workout.

I wasn’t able to work out on Friday (more on that tomorrow), so I went in on Thursday for my 3rd workout of the week. Again, we had 30 minutes straight on the treadmill. There were a bunch of treadmill blocks and each one started with a 2 minute push pace. I toyed with being at 3.6 miles an hour (instead of 3.5), but I wasn’t able to maintain that for the entire 2 minute push. But just doing those sprints within the push of a couple of seconds each was a good step forward and helping me hopefully reach my goal of increasing my treadmill speed soon.

While I didn’t love the 30 minute treadmill block, there was a good reason for it this time. The floor block was 22 minutes straight with 8 different exercises to work through. It was kind of similar to the idea of a run/row, but it was weights/row. We had 3 floor work exercises followed by a 400 meter row, then 3 different floor work exercises followed by a 200 meter row. Then we repeated that cycle as many times as we could. It seemed easy enough to me and I was really looking forward to the weights/row segment. But as soon I did my first row I started to feel off. I thought maybe I had overdone it, but then I noticed that I wasn’t recovering as quickly from the row that I’m used to. I pushed through and kept feeling a bit off. By the second row I realized that there was a good chance that I didn’t eat enough before class. When I looked back at my food diary after class, I had only about 600 calories between my breakfast and lunch when I usually try to get more than that on a workout day. So clearly I was light-headed due to that and I had to keep taking it easy. I ended up skipping my last row because it’s not so easy for me to take it easy on the row and just moved on to the next round of floor exercises.

Even though my Thursday workout ended on a bit of a not-so-great note, I still consider this entire week a week of wins for me. There were so many times I could have been frustrated and given up, but I didn’t. I modified what I needed to and kept going. Despite my head and body disagreeing in what I could do, I focused more on what my body was saying and I know that it was for the best.

This coming week is a 4 workout week, plus there will be 3 workouts in a row! I’m thinking about some ideas for how to make this coming week another successful workout week for me, and I’ll share what I end up doing next week!

Comments Off on An Easier Workout Week (or Ignoring My Head And Listening To My Body)

Posted in Fitness, Fun Stuff, Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged challenge, Orangetheory, progress, struggle, success, treadmill, workout

Doing More Cooking (or Maybe It Does Save Time)

Posted on February 12, 2016 | Comments Off

I think we’ve all seen tons of articles that talk about how cooking from home is so much better than getting take out, delivery, or going out to eat. Obviously, it is cheaper (unless you are making something really elaborate or with a ton of ingredients). But there are also dozens of articles that I’ve seen over the years saying that it’s much faster to make your own dinner than it takes for a delivery person to get to your house.

Cooking has always felt like an event to me. Maybe it’s because I live alone and cooking for one person isn’t always that fun. But it’s never felt like part of the routine or natural in my day. I’m really working on fixing this because I was doing great cooking all my own meals while I was on the cleanse a year ago. It’s been really tough for me to get back into really cooking but it’s an effort that I’m working on right now.

After making my chicken dish on Monday, I was feeling a bit better about cooking again. It was my first big cooking thing in a long time and it did feel great to cook again. And since there were leftovers, I knew I’d have some home cooked meals for a few more meals.

I had ever intention of eating the leftover chicken for dinner the next night, but I ended up eating it for lunch and then feeling very uninspired to make dinner that night. I’m not happy I did this, but I ordered delivery food. While the delivery food tastes good while I’m eating it, I know my body doesn’t love it. I feel a bit sluggish after eating and I know that it is a big factor in my weight gain.

I don’t know why I ordered the food. Obviously I needed dinner, but I didn’t need to order food. It’s almost like an impulse or reflex that I didn’t think about until after the fact. I need to work on being in the moment or more aware when I do this, because I know that I could have done without the delivery food.

From the time I placed my order for food until the time I was eating was just over an hour. And the next day I was determined to prove to myself that I can do much better for myself in an hour with food that I had in the house.

The next day, after getting home from my workout and showering, I cooked myself some dinner. It wasn’t anything fancy. I cut up some zucchini and an onion and cooked those in one pan until the zucchini was brown and the onions were soft. And in another pan (yes, it was a 2 pan dinner!), I cooked a frozen turkey burger that I had in the freezer from Trader Joes. I started the veggies first and then the turkey burger and by some miracle they were basically done at the exact same time.

I have to admit that not only was it healthy and tasted great, it looked pretty nice too.

Home Cooking

I sat down and ate my dinner and then started working on the dishes. There were a lot of dishes to do (knives, 2 pans, cooking utensils, a cutting board, the plate and fork I used to eat) so that took me a while to clean and figure out how to fit everything into the drying rack since I don’t have a dishwasher at my house. By the time that I was done cleaning, I felt like it had been a big production to cook and clean. But I looked at the clock and it hadn’t even been an hour from the time I started cooking until the time I was done with all the cleanup.

I know it shouldn’t have surprised me, but I was pretty shocked. I figured that obviously cooking is faster than waiting on delivery since you can easily cook in under and hour and most deliveries seem to be an hour. But I wasn’t expecting it to be faster to cook, eat, and clean in the time I wait for the delivery guy.

I’m not going to say that I will never order delivery food again. That would be a total lie. I know I’ll order it again because it is delicious and there is nothing wrong with an occasional treat. But I need to work on making it a treat and not a habit. And now I know that the most important thing for me is to make sure my house is stocked with foods that are easy to put together. I’d love to make awesome meals all the time, but when I’m tired and lazy I just need something that is easy to make and will be healthy and fill me up.

I’m sure that at some point it may be possible that I will “forget” this lesson and go back into my bad habits. I’m hoping that won’t be true, but I’ve learned that setbacks are a part of life and I can’t let those get me down. I need to be able to have my setback and then get right back to the regular game plan right away. And I’ve proved to myself that I can do that.

Comments Off on Doing More Cooking (or Maybe It Does Save Time)

Posted in Food, Fun Stuff, Health

Tagged cooking, food, health issues, progress

Being As Honest As Possible (or Making People Feel Awkward)

Posted on February 11, 2016 | Comments Off

I’m pretty open about my life on here. I try not to hide things from all of you and I don’t see the point in doing that (unless I’m waiting to share news for a specific reason). I’ve spent so long not being honest with myself to others (and to myself) that I don’t want to lie or share half-truths if I can avoid it. There’s just no reason to do that and I’m glad that I’ve found an outlet that I feel safe sharing on.

And I’ve been pretty open to my friends and family since being honest on here. Obviously, anyone who reads this blog knows about my eating disorder. And while some family and friends knew about it before I shared (or had guessed that I had it), not everyone did. But now that they do, we can talk about things without fear if we want to. Not everyone does want to talk about it, but I’m glad that people feel ok discussing things with me. I’ve been pretty open with my parents (I usually call them after seeing my therapist so I can update them on my medication dosage or what he has to say about my progress). And I’m glad that no matter if I want to share what’s going on or not, nobody has issues with it. There’s no question in my mind that since being open and honest that recovery is something that is a real possibility. When I was hiding things, there was no way that I could get the help that I needed or realize how deep into things I was. But now, I recognize my good moments and bad moments and have hope that the good will outweigh the bad in the future.

But I’ve become more open and honest outside of the blog lately. I’m sharing more on Facebook (not everyone I’m friends with on Facebook reads the blog). I’m commenting on posts I see about binge eating disorder and trying to answer some of the questions that some people have about it (or defending it when people claim it isn’t real and it’s an excuse people make for their weight issues). I’m even sharing my story on other blogs I write on.

So far, I’ve gotten a very positive response to my honesty and people have been very cool with what I’ve had to say. I used to think that people would see me as weak if I shared my issues with them, and I’m happy that I was totally wrong about it. Some people consider it strong to be honest, but to me I had to be honest for myself and not for others. But even random people who I end up sharing this news with have seemed to be interested in hearing my experience and my story.

But despite pretty much having a positive response, there have been some negative responses that makes me question if I should hide or lie about my eating disorder. I was sharing with someone about how much I love working out at Orangetheory and I had mentioned how much I love the heart rate monitors we wear. I have to be careful with my heart rate because of Vyvanse and wearing a heart rate monitor is the perfect way to make sure my heart rate isn’t getting too high (I can usually feel when it does, but it’s nice to have a backup too). The person I was talking to asked me why I like the heart rate monitors and I mentioned that I take medication that elevates my heart rate and I have to be careful. They asked what medication it was and I told them. Then they asked what it’s for and I told them.

Obviously, I could have kept this all private (and it could be seen as prying but I was fine answering things). And once I shared I have an eating disorder, this person got super weird and started to look at me like I was crazy. They asked the questions and I answered them, but it seemed like after saying my answers they regretted asking.

I know that it’s not my place to make people feel comfortable about my eating disorder (or anything for that matter). And if someone is going to ask me something about it I’m going to answer with as much truth as I can. If that makes them feel bad or awkward it is their problem and not mine. But it still made me question for a second if I was being too open about myself when I got that reaction from that person. It put doubt in my mind that I should be sharing what battles I’m facing.

I’m aware that this was all in my head and that I don’t need to change. I have tons of friends who are brave and honest about their depression, suicide attempts, eating disorders, alcoholism, and other addictions. Knowing the truth about them only makes me feel closer to them, so me sharing the truth hopefully does the same for them. But that self-doubt part of my brain is loud and sometimes I need to tell it to be quiet so I can move on and keep making progress the best way I can.

Comments Off on Being As Honest As Possible (or Making People Feel Awkward)

Posted in Health, Tough Stuff

Tagged binge eating, eating disorder, recovery, truth

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